EL SEGUNDO – Gary Vitti brought a skeleton out of the training room and into the gym Wednesday to better illustrate precisely what happened to Andrew Bynum’s left kneecap in the early minutes of the third quarter Sunday.

The Lakers’ head athletic trainer showed how Bynum suffered a dislocated kneecap when he landed on teammate Lamar Odom’s left foot. Vitti showed how the kneecap popped out of position and damaged soft tissue.

Vitti also said Bynum and the Lakers were fortunate it wasn’t worse. The Lakers expect Bynum to be sidelined for a minimum of two months, which means he could be back in time for the regular season’s stretch drive and the playoffs.

“When you see a player go down the way he did, with the torque he put on his knee, usually the first thing you think of is anterior cruciate ligament damage,” Vitti said. “Of course, it could have been much worse. It could have been a ligament tear and you could have kissed the whole season goodbye.

“We’re hoping to get him back for a month or more prior to the playoffs. (But) I don’t have a crystal ball. Soft tissue healing time is four to six weeks.”

Vitti also said Bynum has a bone bruise on his kneecap.

“That’s probably the thing that’s going to take the longest to feel better, and how long that takes God knows. I don’t,” Vitti said.

It could be quite some time before Bynum can begin rehabilitation exercises to strengthen the muscles around his knee. The plan is to increase Bynum’s leg strength in order to prevent another kneecap injury.

“Right now, he can’t do a whole lot,” Vitti said. “He has a big, swollen knee joint. It’s probably full of blood, which is not good. Blood is not good in a place that it doesn’t belong. It belongs in your vessels. When it leaks out of there it has (bad) effects to other tissues. So we’ve got to get that out of there.”

MORE MEDICAL UPDATES

The Lakers hoped backup forward Vladimir Radmanovic would be sufficiently recovered from a sprained right ankle to practice this week, but they now believe it could be two weeks or more before he returns to the court.

Reserve guard Sasha Vujacic, who has been sidelined by a sprained left ankle and back spasms, practiced Wednesday.

Elliott Teaford covers the Clippers and the NBA for the Southern California News Group. He has written about hockey for the past five years and is looking forward to thawing out after so many days and nights sitting in frozen rinks. He also covered the Lakers for five seasons, including their back-to-back NBA championships in 2009 and '10. He once made a jump shot over future Utah Jazz center Mark Eaton during a pickup game in 1980 at Cypress College.

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